Sonderfarbe

The 'Sonderfarbe' (special color), actually a term from the printing technique, is poetically reinterpreted by Johannes Kersting. It is a special case of the visual, an irritating ricochet that stands outside the usual system, a strange color. Kersting's concern is to break up visual routines and confront them with images whose nature does not allow a clear answer to the question of whether it is pictorial reality, constructed order or fragmentary montage. In doing so, perception "stumbles upon itself in a peculiar way." Elements of photography, painting, and object art flow into a meditative state of limbo. The starting point of the artistic process is usually photography, whose creative potential is measured by its content of reality and precisely by its color:
"What lingers is a diffuse discomfort. It should be noted that in the photographic works of Johannes Kersting, color resonates as a moment of tension that subtly reflects our disorientation. This is precisely the fascination."

For in photography, but also beyond, colors reveal the ability to disrupt or even cancel out the spatial structure and to put the reality promise of photographic illustration to the test. Painting is granted more freedom in this respect, but it is also tapped on the laws of our conventions of perception.

Literally, the term 'special color' also includes the 'special', which also means the 'special', the 'extraordinary'. And color in photography is extraordinary in such a conciseness and radiance as Johannes Kersting uses it; The use of color in the architectural foundations, which Kersting processes in his compositions and can be found everywhere: in urban space, on a rusty poles, in the surprising chiaroscuro of a weathered wall or the faded plastic of an advertising sign is also particularly special. These elements hold an astonishing moment of irritation when they are photographically detached from their real context. In Kersting's 'Extended Photographs', they are not only metaphorically but literally beyond the scope of the picture and, in the physical world, they become defectors of the picture.

Small, everyday observations, details of unspectacular utility architecture and unfamiliar lighting situations combine to create a mysterious puzzle of contemplation; new pictorial inventions of virtual reality and of digital space do the rest to undermine the viewer's comprehension. Ultimately, it remains to be stated that "Johannes Kersting follows an exploration will, to wrest new aspects from the specific traditions of painting and photography and to translate them into a liberated pictorial concept.

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The sky might be bluer elsewhere - but certainly not more monochrome. By beeing reduced to a surface, just like other real objects it at once loses its form, its magnitude and its mutual references. Without any context to the outside, more composition than body to the inside, the objects forfeit their content and remain as colour patches. Watching Johannes Kerstings photograph, we find ourselves forced to constantly check whether the pictured scene can actually be found in that very location.

The reality of the shot and the reality in the shot - that is where the tension between documentation and construction in Kersting's pictures is occuring. Kersting does not feel obligated to choose but prefers to explore means and methods of both. In fact some of his pictures also document the fun of controlled ambivalence, when for instance a clear composition suggests easy legibility even when all reference and scale has been removed, or when a little bird breaks open a sublime geometric ensemble, providing proportionality spatiality and facticity by its mere presence. But behind such playfulness lies a sincere and calm fascination with the sheer dissolvability of reality into pure composition and order. It then becomes unnecessary to ask exactly what the picture represents. However, Kersting uses the real world not only as a store or a display cabinet of shapes but also as a thematic reference point. The containers and and ventilation shafts in his pictures are not merely shapes, they are also rust and peeled-off paint. Those pictures are just as synthetic and collage - like as the more abstract works, and that shows that Kersting is interested not only in exploring photography's medial potential or in constructivist formalism, but also in the documentation of actual, objectified structures. For what does it mean that we are able to photograph the world in such a way that it raises the crucial question of digital post-processing? How much standardisation, modularisation and artificial shaping can we afford before our environment starts to appear non-credible and surreal? Is a broken concrete edge or a strip of rust distinguishing? What good is the difference between wood, tarmac and corrugated metal if every single material can be found and exchange in absolutely homogenous texture and regular surface? It is but a small leap from turf to a simple wallpaper, and Kersting perfectly masters the art of documenting "his" scenes, all somehow oscillating between Sunset Strip and supermarket, a sa juxtaposition of arbitrary textures.

Thus if we understand Kersting's works as a tension between documentation and construction, it is not least the "chromophilia", the love of colour, that gives access to both. This chromophilia is not only analytical, objective shematisation, but also directly and emotionally appealing.

(Dr. Patrick Ruckdeschel)